Money talks in Australian election betting

At the same time that opinion polls were showing a huge lead to Labor over the incumbent Coalition the betting market was painting a much different picture and is one of the reasons that I believe public opinion polls are returning people's expectation and not their true voting intention.

The following graph is a subset of my daily post on the 6 bookie poll and shows just the Coalition price starting on 12 September, which was pretty much the highest price point.



Since that time the price changes from each bookie are:



For people who are unfamiliar with betting markets, a price of $3.70 represents 27% of the money invested (calculated as 100/3.7 and leaving aside bookie margin). A price of $2.30 represents 43% of the market so the increase in market percentage is less dramatic than the absolute decrease in price.

For the sports betting markets to move so quickly and for the seat-by-seat betting market available at Portlandbet to show a 75-73-2 (Labor-Coalition-Independent) result proves that this will be a very close election indeed and that it's far from over. Any slip ups by either side will seriously hurt their chances from here on in.

(Nothing follows)